Ramble Bear, a 23-year-old rescued Ussuri brown bear, acts more like a poodle than a predator. He blinks and licks my hand through the protective fence, very demure. His tongue is surprisingly soft.
“He’s a big flirt,” Susan B. Eirich, licensed psychologist, biologist, and founder of Earthfire Institute Wildlife Sanctuary & Retreat Center, tells me during my visit to the center just west of Grand Teton National Park in the U.S. state of Idaho.